Interac is playing catch-up on digital payments

Canada is the only G20 country without an updated digital payments system. Interac’s new CEO wants to change that ASAP.

Driving the news: Interac plans to revamp operations to become quicker and more flexible ahead of real-time rail (RTR), a long-awaited digital payments system that would process transactions almost immediately on a 24/7, 365-day-a-year basis.

• While something like an e-transfer appears to work instantaneously, it typically takes a little while, sometimes days, for money to move from one account to another. What you see in your account right away is essentially your bank advancing you the cash.

Catch-up: Payments Canada — the non-profit body in charge of the country’s payments infrastructure — has been working on RTR for years and put Interac in charge of half of the project. It was set to launch in 2022, but has faced more delays than the Blade reboot.

• For its part, Interac finished its half of the project last year. Work on the other half resumed in April after a hiatus, with a goal to begin testing the system in 2026.

Why it matters: Our outdated payments system creates a bunch of daily headaches, like relatively low e-transfer limits and the lack of payment apps like Venmo. RTR would eliminate these hassles and, in turn, stoke billions of gains in economic efficiency.

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